Twist (24 page)

“Look, kiddo, I never met you before in my life.” He winced and shook his head, his eyes slipping out of focus.

“Let me guess what you're going to change.” I tapped the reverter against my chin, thinking back on all his many changes I'd had to revert. “You have another parking ticket that needs fixing. No? A new slimy scheme to shirk innocent people out of a few thousand quiddies? Or maybe just going back to pick some winning lottery numbers.”

We were in a convenience store after all. I peered over the aisle and ahh, yes. There was his past self, up at the store counter at the front purchasing lottery tickets.

“How'd you know—?” He probably wasn't used to being addressed this way, especially by a seventeen-year-old girl. His eyelids slipped into their usual snaky slits. “Who are you?”

“It doesn't matter. You won't remember any of this anyway.” I was wasting time as it was. The sooner I got back to my mom, the better. I tapped the reverter to the bare skin at the nape of Leto's neck and clicked the end.

Before he began to fade, he reeled to the side and doubled over, clutching his stomach. Leto tried to hold himself upright by grabbing a display of scoop-your-own Blinky Beans. He pulled on it so hard that the side snapped off. An avalanche of candy littered the floor.

“Leto?”

He clasped his hands over his ears and shuddered. When he pulled them away, the palms were covered in blood. He stared at me, his mouth a gaping maw.

And then he disappeared.

“What. The. Blark.” I stared at the spot where he'd just been. A small puddle of his hemorrhaged blood reflected the look of horror on my face.

My tendrils prickled. My whole spine felt like it was vibrating.

Something was very, very wrong.

The store clerk rushed over to see what had fallen, and I didn't even bother trying to hide before I faded back to my time. I landed in the sloped basin of a drainage culvert. My foot skidded across a slick of mud. But when I lifted my shoe, I realized it was scarlet with what was actually congealing blood. I fought back a retch then followed the drips like a demented Gretel.

There'd be no candy at the end of this trail.

At the top of a spillway, the trail stopped. I looked over the edge. Leto lay in a heap at the bottom, moaning. I scrambled down to reach him.

“What's happening to me?” he said between gasps of pain. Blood continued to ooze from his ears.

“I don't know.” I grabbed my speakeazy. “Stay calm, Leto. I'll get help.”

“How do you know my name?”

“I … it doesn't matter.” I started to call for medical assistance, but he reached up and covered my speakeazy.

“Don't.” His voice was hoarse and strained.

“Huh?” I turned his face toward me, expecting his usual sneer, but there was something else entirely. Something I'd never seen on him before.

Affection.

Not just affection. Adoration. Like I was the biggest pile of cash he'd ever seen, walking around on two legs.

“Leto, you're really hurt. I need to call—”

And then he said the one thing I least expected to come out of his mouth.

“Do you think Ed would like the sea grass in Chincoteague?”

“What?”

He didn't remember my name. He didn't remember he'd once blackmailed me. But he knew the name of my pet pegamoo and my boyfriend's hometown?

“Aigh!” Leto crumpled over again, each breath a struggle.

“I have to call for help,” I said. He was in really bad shape.

“No.” He coughed and blood splattered the ground.

That's when I realized. He wasn't just hurt. He was … dying.

I was a free Shifter whose boyfriend was a Level Five Chronofugitive and whose mother was in jail for smuggling narcotics. And I was sitting next to the world's shadiest Neo. Who I'd just punched. And who was dying. I put away my speakeazy.

“You're so beautiful,” he said. The look was back, like a devoted puppy.

“Look, Leto, I don't know what's happening to you or what you're playing at or how you know those things but—”

“Have you solved it yet?” He tried to sit up, but it was too hard for him. “Have you solved the clue? It has to be the key to all this.”

“What clue? Key to what? Leto, what are you talking about?” Blark it. I had to get help, no matter what the consequences were. I pulled the speakeazy back out, but he wrenched it out of my hands.

“No. It will … complicate … things,” he said between gasps.

“I don't think this can get much more complicated.”

“No, focus on the clue. Focus on—” His eyes slipped out of focus, and for a moment, I thought he was gone. But then he started laughing. “Don't you see, Bree? To save his. To save
his
. I believe in you.”

His laughter turned to a peaceful smile.

“Just let me look at you,” he said.

“Finn?” I wasn't quite sure why I said it. It was ridiculous. This was Leto. But Leto was acting like
Finn
.

His only response was a cough. His coughs turned to gagging.

His gagging turned to silence.

Leto's eyes drifted open, unblinking, and I knew he was gone.

I barely remembered standing up.

Barely remembered climbing out of that drainage ditch and running from the scene.

All I truly remembered was thinking, He knows my name. He knows my clue. No one can find me here. Honestly, I was probably in full-on shock at that point.

I was twenty yards away from the culvert slope when I heard the first scream.

“There's a body down there!”

I drew a deep breath and bobbed my bowed head like a buoy in the sea of lookie-loos who rushed past me to the spot where Leto lay.

“He's dead!”

Blend in. Blend in.

That's when I felt it. The reverter went off in my pocket.

I was surrounded by witnesses. There was no way to escape the crowd's notice and Shift. I started to walk more quickly to get out of the thick.

“Did you see anything?” A woman caught me by the shoulder. “You were walking from that direction, weren't you?”

“I … no. I mean, yes, I was walking from that direction. But I didn't see anything.”

She peered at me like she was taking a mental snapshot, but she let me leave.

I kept my gait calm and even, trying to make my way out of eyeshot so I could click the reverter, but every time I looked back, the lady was still watching me.

The reverter began to slow. Ugh! Time was running out. I felt so trapped—that same feeling I'd had when this had happened at the movie with Wyck, and then again at ICE with Finn.

Wyck had chosen his timing well both times. It was like he'd somehow known when I'd be trapped and unable to get away and perform the reversion in time to stop the change. Like he'd chosen those specific moments to take away the people I love most in the world.

Wait. What if that was exactly what he'd done?

But there was no one in my life left to hurt. Well, no one but …

Mimi.

I gave up all pretense of calmness and broke into a run. I sprinted into a clothing boutique and ran back to the restrooms, but they were all locked.

“Ahem.” The store attendant wore a pink suit and lifted a pert leg. She looked like a blarking flamingo. “May I help you?”

“I need your bathroom.”

“Our facilities are reserved for customers only.”

“Fine.” I grabbed the first shirt in arm's reach, a hideous green feather and foil number. “I'll take this.”

“Very well.” She shuffled forward. Faster, lady! She brushed her hair against the lock. “Green is this season's freshest—”

I'd already slammed the door in her face. I yanked out the reverter and clicked the end.

Just as it stopped glowing.

“No!”

“Another size?”

I threw the door open, dumping the shirt on the ground as I raced out. This couldn't be happening. All the way to the Institute, I tried to think of some way to check if Mimi was all right other than simply calling her and asking her if she was all right. That would just freak her out if she was all right and freak her out worse if she wasn't all right.

No. She was all right.

She had to be all right.

I made it to the Institute in record time. As I ran through the school's halls, students shuffled out of the way.

“Are you okay, Bree?” asked Molly Hayashi.

“Fine!” I called without stopping. Molly knew who I was, so I was still a student here. I hoped that was a good sign.

I reached our room, and as I bent over to scan my hair, the door whished open. Mimi stood on the other side. She was startled but definitely alive.

“Thank goodness you're all right.” I gave her a huge hug.

“Hi there … Bree?” She gave me a tentative pat-pat-pat on the back, and I pulled myself together. She didn't realize anything had changed or might be wrong. Again with the don't-freak-her-out.

“Sorry.” I wiped the mists of relief from my eyes before she had a chance to notice. “I've had a really hard day. I'm just glad to see you.”

“Oh. Well, I'm glad to see you, too.”

That's when the overwhelming muchness of the day hit me, really hit me. Part of me wanted to go straight back to the jail and talk to my mom again, try to figure out a way to get her released. But I wouldn't be much help to anyone without some sleep.

“Are you headed out?” I squeezed past her and flopped onto my bed.

It wasn't until I hit the pillow that I realized something was different. Namely, my side of the room looked like the glitter fairy had vomited all over it.

“What the—?” But I bit back my words so fast that I chomped down on my tongue. This change had apparently affected me after all. It had made me … girly?

“Uhh, Bree.” Mimi fidgeted at the doorway, glancing down the hall like she was expecting something.

“It's okay,” I said. “You can leave. I'll just…” My voice trailed as I finally took the time to really look at my side of the room. The frames that usually held pictures of Mimi and I laughing throughout the years were different. Most were filled with Pennedy Addington and various people. Mimi was in a lot.

I wasn't in any of them.

A swell grew in my throat.

“Mimi, can I ask you a weird question?”

“Umm. Sure.” The look on her face told me I didn't even need to ask.

Mimi wasn't my roommate on this timeline, much less my best friend. I couldn't let her see my confusion. She might turn me in for suspected Madness.

“I wanted to see if”—I searched the room for something to justify my barging in as I peeled myself off the bed—“if you'd finished your French assignment.”

“Oh.” She looked relieved although still confused. We must not even be study partners on this timeline. “Yes. Did you want to discuss it?”

“I did,” I said, backing toward the door, “but I think I figured it out just now. Sorry to disturb you.”

“No problem,” she said brightly, her usual cheery self. The self she reserved for superficial friends. Acquaintances. Friends who didn't know she snored like a steam locomotive and held an irrational fear of rabbits.

“Well,” she said, looking out into the hallway again, my cue to leave, I realized.

“I should go,” I said. “You probably have a date with Charlie or something.”

“Charlie?” Mimi said. “Charlie
Wu
?”

“Sorry. I thought maybe you and he…”

“He's a
transporter,
” she said.

So I guess there was my answer to how Shifter/Non relations were going.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'll catch you later.”

“Uh huh,” Mimi said, but she already seemed to have forgotten I was there. She gritted her teeth and shut her eyes tight, leaning against the door frame to support herself.

The Buzz.

But before I could ask how she was on Buzztabs, she pushed her sleeve up and tapped a small nodule attached to the crook of her arm. Almost instantly, her features relaxed, and I could tell whatever pain she was in had lessened.

“I'll see you around,” she said.

No, she wouldn't.

As the door whished shut behind me, I pressed my back against the wall, swallowing my silent scream. Three changes. Three changes that had been aimed squarely at me. I bet this was blarking Wyck again who'd done this.

When I caught up with him, I would … I would …

I bit back my fury. There was nothing I could do. I couldn't reclaim five lost years of best friendship. I couldn't grow my mom's hair back. I couldn't even force my tendrils back to Finn.

I was thankful Mimi was alive. Didn't give two whiffs of a monkey's butt about me, but alive. That contraption on her arm confirmed my fears, though. The Buzz was getting worse for chipped Shifters. It made sense. The more changes to the timeline, the further Shifters were from where they were supposed to be.

I passed Pennedy, Mimi's roommate now, in the hall, and she gave me a not-overly friendly nod, which I returned. Pennedy and I had always gotten along okay. It's just—well, it wasn't that I'd call Pennedy shallow.… No, actually, that's exactly what I'd call her.

My friendship with Pennedy had always been through Mimi. Come to think of it, most of my friendships at the Institute had had a Mimi-portal. She was pretty much the sole reason I hadn't become a full-on recluse my first year. I'd never operated under any pretense that Mimi didn't make me a better person. But I'd never stopped to consider that maybe I had made her a better person in return.

The real Mimi—my Mimi—would never have stared me out of her room just now. My Mimi would have swooped down on someone who was visibly hurting, whether they were friends or not, and held on tight until things were better. Maybe she had honed that through her friendship with me.